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Disclosure: This post was created as part of the BPA in Receipts Campaign in which I am a financially compensated blogger. The opinions are my own and based on my own experience.

Keeping your family healthy and staying away from nasty chemicals such as bisphenol A (BPA) — a nasty endocrine disruptor — at the grocery store can be a daunting task. But there is new research (#ad) that shows that it’s not just the food that could contain BPA, it’s the cash register receipts as well. Specifically it’s the thermal register receipts that are the issue. That kind of paper feels really soft and slippery, because it’s made with BPA, a chemical that’s been banned or severely restricted in countries including Canada, France and China.

Ninety-four samples of cash register receipts were collected from 12 grocery store chains and analyzed for BPA. The receipts came from 82 stores in 66 cities and 17 states. Of the 94 samples that were analyzed, BPA was found to be present above the sample reporting limits in 27 of the samples. That’s 28.7% or over 1/4 of the samples that contained BPA. That might not seem like a huge number especially considering most people don’t handle receipts that often. However, if you think about the checkout clerks who are touching receipt after receipt as they hand them to the customers for eight or more hours per day, that adds up to a lot of BPA exposure.

Winn-Dixie, the grocery store chain popular in Southern states came in with the highest level of BPA concentrations above the sample reporting limits. All of the concentrations found on Winn Dixie receipts were above 1,000 mg. Ten Winn Dixie locations were sampled. Kroger and Safeway, the nation’s two largest grocery chains, also tested positive for high levels of BPA.

If you as a consumer want to avoid BPA in cash register receipts, you can simply refuse them, but I’m not sure what the answer is for the store clerks who have no choice but to handle them regularly. Perhaps wear gloves or better yet, get your company on board with using receipts without BPA.

Personally, I do most of my shopping at Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage (it helps that it’s a couple blocks from my house) and I recall seeing a notice posted at each checkout counter that their receipts do NOT contain BPA. Hopefully more companies will follow suit.

Disclosure: This post was created as part of the BPA in Receipts Campaign in which I am a financially compensated blogger. The opinions are my own and based on my own experience.